He woke with the solution already formed. That was how it arrived — not as deliberation but as a completed shape: he knew exactly what he needed for the office area, knew it would free the pantry shelf he had been borrowing, knew the geometry of the fix before he had put words to the problem. So the morning had a destination. Walmart, a short list, and back. He got into the truck with that specific satisfaction of a system about to be brought into better alignment.
The other problem had not resolved itself so cleanly. Three months without sleep. He said it plainly from the driver's seat, camera propped and running, the road unspooling past cloud-cooled dunes. Ten minutes of deep sleep the night before — he had found the watch charger at last and the watch had told him the number. Almost six hours in bed, which was good, and ten minutes of it that counted, which was not. The night before that, four or five. He walked the history back for whoever was listening: the mattress arrived, he used it two weeks, it wasn't working, he added a topper. But the mattress had never been level. The slide-out side lacked the high-density material underneath, so the surface he had been assessing was never the surface he thought he was assessing. Today he would strip the topper off and sleep on the firm mattress alone, level this time, and see. He likes firm surfaces. He said so twice, as if confirming a variable he trusted. And then, without softening it: if that doesn't work, he is out of ideas.
The cloud cover was doing what shade does. He noted it as a measurement rather than a mood — direct sunlight is not good, the difference is substantial, and the next two sites are already chosen with sun exposure in mind. He still intends to paint the roof, because there will be stretches where sunlight isn't optional and the paint will help then. Environment as adjustable parameter, each surface tuned or scheduled for tuning: shelf, mattress, roof, site.
He had been watching Burning Man videos. He said he was going, said it three or four times, each repetition tightening it from want to plan. Not this year — the timing collides with his own arrival — but next year, definitely, and he named the strangeness of it himself, the crowd thing, from him. He thought he would have the best time ever. Nevada was already the direction, so the event sat inside a trajectory he had drawn for other reasons. Only Bailey remained unsolved: pets are prohibited, and it wouldn't be a good form for Blaze either. He left that open and kept driving.
Then a Jeep passed and waved and he waved back, and he offered it as evidence against himself — there was a time he wouldn't have. They didn't belong in this community, as he'd seen it then. Now they are everywhere and they all wave and so he waves, and he named the shift as acceptance rather than surrender. A second Jeep. He had forgotten the trash. He was already driving, and now he had to go back to the dumpster, because he would need that room.
The detour bought time, so he used it for the thing he had been circling. What is this channel for. He said that a lot of what he actually likes doing, he doesn't like to share — that hiking with a camera in his hand defeats the reason he goes, that solitude and contact with a place don't survive being narrated. Holding the camera changes the experience. He didn't resolve it. He said he doesn't think it's a very interesting channel, that all he does is tell people about his life and the struggles, that it's kind of boring, and then he let the question stand, unclosed, and mentioned that the washer fluid indicator was annoying to look at the whole time and he would get some at the store.
He said he was happy, excited, restless. He wants to be in the vehicle and gone. He doesn't want to be here, and here is worth it, because he needs his top teeth done and that appointment is the gate. He would ask them to expedite it. He had been watching Nevada videos — beautiful, more than desert, and even the desert interesting in its way — and Northern Nevada is where he intends to spend as much time as he can. Part of the reason is the emptiness. You watch the travel videos and there is nobody. He needs that. And then he said the thing he never says and probably should: it isn't that he wants to be alone all the time. It's controlling his interactions. Control over his environment. Selective engagement. Those are the important things, and they're not easy to come by. He mentioned there was so much he wanted to show around here, very cool stuff, and couldn't, because it would reveal his location.
The hill came. It always comes, and it always catches him at the top, stopped, first gear required, someone too close behind. He has driven manuals a long time and they still make him nervous — this is the honest kind of competence, the kind that keeps respecting the thing it has mastered. People never think about manual transmissions. He explained the truck's feature as he used it, the few seconds of hold that keep the vehicle from rolling back while the gear gets sorted, and he called it so freaking cool. Then he was over and moving. Back at the site, in his mind, the rig still rocks. Six stabilizers now — two on the slide, four under the vehicle — and it isn't enough, so the placement must be wrong, so he'll keep working on that. Somewhere in the middle of it he sang the line about rehab, twice, and let it hang there, and drove on toward the store.